Mondoweiss – May 19, 2024
The ‘NYTimes’ finally publishes a comprehensive indictment
of ‘Jewish terrorism’ against Palestinians
The New York Times has astonished its readers by publishing a long indictment of a subject it has purposely ignored for years: “Jewish terrorism” against Palestinians.
By James North
The New York Times is astonishing its readers, especially those of us who monitor its tradition of biased and dishonest reporting about Israel/Palestine. The paper just published a long indictment of what it actually called “Jewish terrorism” against Palestinians. The report, which is the cover story of the widely-circulated Sunday magazine, is titled: “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel.” Here is theﾠopening paragraph of the “takeaway” synopsis that ran along with the actual article:
“For decades, most Israelis have considered Palestinian terrorism the country’s biggest security concern. But there is another threat that may be even more destabilizing for Israel’s future as a democracy: Jewish terrorism and violence, and the failure to enforce the law against it.”
The massive article, by Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, prints out to 52 pages. It covers decades of history, and includes more than 100 interviews. Bergman has long had ties to Israel’s intelligence services, and he includes inside sources. “This story is told in three parts. . .,” the reporters say. “Taken together they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.”
Howard French, the distinguished former New York Times reporter turned author, asked the obvious question on Twitter:
“Where was the daily coverage of the Times throughout all of this?”
French’s view was echoed in the paper’s comment section. “Jack” was one of the 2500 Times readers who have already overwhelmingly endorsed the article. He wrote: “. . . I am struck by this piece being the only one I can recall to make consistent use of the term ‘terrorism’ to describe the actions of Jewish Israelis. It is far more common to hear settlers who commit violence against unarmed civilians referred to as ‘extremists’ rather than ‘terrorists.’”
This site has long argued that the Times, (like other mainstream TV and print outlets), covers up Jewish extremism as a central strategy in its ongoing whitewash of Israel. Time after time, weﾒve shown how the paper ignores violent Jewish Israeli figures, and disguises vicious unprovoked attacks by Jewish “settlers” in the occupied West Bank as “clashes,” which somehow seem to just erupt spontaneously. But this report — finally — is starting to tell some truths. Let’s hope that the succession of Times Jerusalem bureau chiefs who committed malpractice over the years are now feeling a sense of shame.
There are signs that “The Unpunished” is already starting to get traction elsewhere in the mainstream. Nicolle Wallace, who rarely reports on Israel/Palestine, gave 15 minutes of air time to the article in her May 10 program on MSNBC, including on-camera interviews with the two reporters.
So far, Hasbara Central, Israel’s huge propaganda apparatus, has apparently been stunned into silence. But the midnight oil is surely burning in both Tel Aviv and at AIPAC headquarters in Washington, D.C., because this might be the biggest single mainstream journalist challenge ever to the standard dishonest Israeli narrative.
The Bergman/Mazzetti report is far from perfect. It is long, but it doesn’t include the word “apartheid” a single time. The reporters aren’t required to agree with the assessment, but they should have corrected their paper’s previous whitewash and at least explained that major human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli organization B’Tselem, have all found that the Israeli system constitutes “apartheid” under international law.
Nor does the report challenge the prevailing euphemism, which is that the more than 700,000 Jewish Israelis who have violated international law by moving into the occupied West Bank are “settlers”; they are in fact more accurately described as “colonists.”
So why did the Times print this long report, which does actually start to correct decades of its biased coverage? In time, leaks from people on the paper’s staff may provide part of the answer. But surely the pro-Palestine solidarity movement, along with alternative media, can claim some of the credit. In the Internet age, it is much harder to cover up the truth. First hand accounts from Gaza, the occupied Palestinian West Bank, and from Israel itself, are now widely available, and the student protesters and others have spread the word. Add to that internal dissension at the Times itself, and so top management there may have decided the paper had to act if its reputation wasn’t going to be completely tarnished.
A related question: Ronen Bergman has long had well-placed sources inside Israel’s intelligence elite. Very little of what is in this long Times article is new; much of the reporting is about events that happened decades ago. So why did Bergman decide — now — to report on what is basically old news? And why did his sources, who include former Israeli prime ministers, decide — now — to talk to the New York Times?
A valuable post on this site in March 2023 by the eloquent Razi Nabulse offers a clue. Nabulse probed behind the headlines to explain why Israeli Jews last year joined the massive uprising against the effort by Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right wing allies to stage a “coup” against the country’s legal system. The protesters represented the old Israeli elite, who are losing political power to the religious far right and the increasingly powerful settler/colonists. It is this old elite that Bergman quoted at length in this long report. The Times may be trying to protect this older “good” Israel from Netanyahu and his “bad” allies, who are the greatest threat to the country’s international standing in many decades.
It is too early to celebrate the Times‘s possible change in direction. First we will have to see if the paper, or other mainstream U.S. media, do any follow up. The adage used to be that “yesterday’s newspaper wraps today’s fish,” and the online attention span can also be short. It is possible that this story will die down in a few days, and the Times will go back to its old distortion methods. We shall see.
World Socialist Web Site – May 20, 2024
Doctors Against Genocide inaugural conference details health disaster in Gaza amid press boycott
By Shannon Jones
Doctors Against Genocide, a global health organization committed to confronting and preventing genocide, held its inaugural conference in Dearborn, Michigan, on Saturday, May 18, at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center.
The event titled “A Century of Genocide on Palestine” brought together medical health professionals and anti-genocide advocates in the US and internationally. Experts in a variety of medical fields gave reports on different aspects of the ongoing US-Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the destruction of critical infrastructure and the displacement of virtually the entire population.
Doctors Against Genocide was founded in 2023 and has been conducting advocacy and public awareness of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Among the headlined speakers at the conference were Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and Dr. Yasser Abu Jamel, Director General of the Gaza Mental Health Community Program. Detroit Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib spoke, as did Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate. Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a scathing critic of the Israeli genocide, had been scheduled to speak but did not attend.
Event organizers welcomed the World Socialist Web Site to the event, which was boycotted and blacked out by the corporate media. A team from Mehring Books sold more than one dozen copies of the book The Logic of Zionism, from Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North.
Dr. Abu Sittah led the first panel, “Understanding Genocide; Medical and Ethical Perspectives.” The doctor is a British-Palestinian plastic and reconstructive surgeon and rector at Glasgow University. He had treated patients at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital during the Israeli siege. He was recently denied entry into Germany, France and the Netherlands. No reason for the ban was advanced, although it has now apparently been lifted.
Dr. Abu Sittah reported that malnourishment was a major factor in the increasing death rate among patients in Gaza because of the failure of wounds to heal properly. He said that he estimated that one-half of the amputations being performed in Gaza were necessitated by the collapse of the healthcare system.
He said that he believed Israel had deliberately chosen hospitals, such as Al-Shifa, because of their prestige and international connections in order to test global reaction and set a standard of impunity for its crimes. He went on to blast the supposed “humanitarian” air drops and the pier being constructed by the United States in Gaza, explaining they were a “facade” aimed at prolonging the genocide by providing a cover for Israel.
He also took aim at the British Medical Association, which like the American Medical Association has refused to condemn the killing of its own members by Israeli forces in Gaza. He noted that doctors who dared to speak out were being pursued and vilified.
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestine Medical Relief Society, who had been in Gaza during previous Israeli incursions, spoke remotely. He said the present scale of destruction was “beyond imagination.”
He estimated that in addition to the official death toll, 10,000 were missing under the rubble and warned that many of those listed as injured will eventually die because of present conditions.
He pointed out that 5.3 percent of Gazans had been killed or injured, the equivalent of 18 million casualties proportionately in the US. Over 429 medical personnel have been killed, and horrifying stories are emerging, including the torture of a hospital director by Israeli forces by use of electric shocks.
Speaking at the second panel, “100 Years of Genocide on Palestine,” Dr. Anis Kassem, professor of international law, said that Israel had saved South Africa the trouble of proving “intent” to commit genocide in its case brought before the International Court of Justice. Various pronouncements by high-level officials showed explicit intent, including the statement by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who called Palestinians “human animals.”
Forced displacement, Dr. Barghouti said, was a key method of killing, while the most devastating tool of the genocide was the complete destruction of the medical system in Gaza.
Also speaking during the panel was Representative Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She called Israel’s bombing of hospitals in Gaza a “war crime.” She stated, “True genocide is unfolding before our eyes.”
She continued, “I care that our country is silent and enabling” genocide. The US is “setting a precedent. They dehumanize Palestinians to justify mass murder.” She also denounced Biden for sending “$15 billion to Israel without regard to human rights laws.”
However, the self-professed “socialist” Tlaib never uttered the words “capitalism” or “imperialism” in reference to the ongoing genocide, nor did she try to explain why, in the face of such shocking and outrageous crimes, she and fellow DSA members, such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were continuing to back the re-election of Biden, the chief enabler of Israeli war crimes, and to work within the Democratic Party.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was also scathing in her indictment of US government policy, declaring, “We are looking at the most horrific genocide on record; the most rapid and destructive in modern history.” She noted that the “torture and murder of children on an industrial scale” was being normalized. She called for creating an “unstoppable uprising” and at one point mentioned a “general strike.”
However, Stein did not suggest the necessity for a break with the existing political structures and called for a general strike without reference to the working class or a struggle against capitalism and its reactionary nation-state system.
In the afternoon panel, First Hand Testimonials, Dr. Yasser Abu Jamel, director-general of the Gaza Community Health Program, spoke of the “severe psychological impacts” of the Israeli onslaught, including the fact that two-thirds of housing in Gaza has been destroyed to date.
Dr. Aseel Awad, a pediatrician, spoke about the impact of these events on childhood. She noted that continual exposure to stress hormones, what she called “toxic stress,” will eventually impact vital organs increasing the risk of such things as asthma and COPD.
She called the systematic starvation of the population of Gaza, that includes 1 million children, a “massacre in slow motion.”
Another panelist detailed the results of a study based on public sources detailing the destruction of critical infrastructure in Gaza. The report, based on satellite photos at an earlier stage of the Israeli assault, showed that in the area studied, 61 percent of medical facilities, 50 percent of educational facilities and 30 percent of water infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke to one of the organizers of the conference, Dr. Marie Najjar, about Doctors Against Genocide. She explained, “I joined as part of the founding board in December. All of our members are volunteers. We all work full-time in our medical professions, and we are working to mobilize other healthcare workers. Some of our main initiatives are advocacy.”
Asked about the refusal of the American Medical Association to condemn the attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza, she said, “They have made a public stance that they are essentially not going to get involved.”
She noted the double standard observed by the AMA in relation to the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. “With Ukraine they have been very vocal about medical neutrality not being observed and healthcare workers being targeted. They have sent $100,000 to help in Ukraine.” She added that in contrast, “They have made a specific stance to not take a stance about Palestine, because it is not American.”
She continued, “People are losing their jobs for speaking out about what is right. You grow up learning about the Holocaust, reading the Diary of Anne Frank, watching Schindler’s List. I grew up thinking ‘how can this ever happen?’ I am seeing in my lifetime how it can happen.
“We have it on video. It is every day. We have access to all of this with our own eyes.”
This reporter pointed out that opposition to war and genocide was being criminalized, as shown by the mass arrest of US college students protesting genocide and the arrest of socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk in Ukraine for opposing the war.
She replied, “It is very similar to what happened during World War II. If you spoke out against atrocities, you could be arrested. It is the same thing. If you don’t learn history, you are doomed to repeat it. A lot of those who are making these decisions have studied history.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/20/spuc-m20.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
World Socialist Web Site – May 20, 2024
Iranian president killed in helicopter crash
By Peter Symonds
A helicopter carrying Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi as well as Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other officials crashed Sunday in mountainous area some 600 kilometres northwest of the capital of Tehran.
Both Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian were confirmed to have died, Iranian news agencies have confirmed.
Raisi and his entourage had been returning from Iran’s East Azerbaijan province to inaugurate a dam with neighbouring Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev near their border on the Aras River. Raisi’s helicopter was one of three in transit—the other two returning safely.
In comments on state TV, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said: “The esteemed president and company were on their way back aboard some helicopters and one of the helicopters was forced to make a hard landing due to the bad weather and fog.” He said that rescue teams had been hampered in reaching the areas as a result of difficult weather conditions.
According to Iran’s state TV, the “accident” took place near Jolfa, a city on the border with Azerbaijan.
The IRNA news agency reported that more than 60 rescue teams using search dogs and drones had been sent to a mountainous forest area near the town of Varzaghan. Soldiers, police and personnel from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) have also been sent.
Raisi’s death could trigger a political crisis and lead to sharp infighting in the country’s Islamic bourgeois clerical regime. He was installed as president, replacing the so-called moderate Hassan Rouhani, who had to step down after serving two terms, in an anti-democratic election limited to a handful of hand-picked candidates.
Raisi, a conservative, is regarded as close to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was Tehran’s prosecutor-general from 1989 to 1994, deputy chief of the Judicial Authority for a decade from 2004, and then national prosecutor-general in 2014.
His election took place amid the breakdown of Iran’s nuclear deal with the US and European imperialist powers known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which Rouhani had championed. The crippling US-led sanctions regime had produced a severe economic and social crisis, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic that fuelled growing political unrest.
A significant element of the sanctions was a US ban on the export of much-needed spare parts necessary to maintain and repair Iran’s aging fleet of aircraft and helicopters. Raisi and other officials were flying in a civilian Bell 212 helicopter mainly manufactured in the US.
The 2021 election placed the hardline or principalist faction, aligned closely with the IRGC, in firm control of all branches of the state apparatus. Under Raisi, the regime responded to the eruption of protests and strikes with savage repression, including executions.
A comment in the US-based Atlantic entitled “Who would benefit from Ebrahim Raisi’s Death?” suggested indirectly that the crash, if confirmed, might not be accidental. After noting that an accident was certainly possible given the state of Iran’s helicopter fleet, the terrain and poor weather conditions, the writer declared: “Yet suspicions will inevitably surround the crash” and the question “who benefits” is posed.
The article itself is limited to an examination of the competing political factions within Iran. Raisi faced opposition not only from the so-called moderates that have championed market reform and closer relations with the West, but more hardline factions critical of Raisi’s lack of tougher measures.
However, the question “who benefits” also has to be placed within the context of the rapidly intensifying geo-political tensions developing throughout the Middle East, fuelled by the US-backed Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel, the US and its allies are engaged in a de-facto military conflict in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. The chief target is Iran and any militia, parties or governments aligned with Tehran.
While waging its barbaric war in Gaza, Israel has carried out numerous airstrikes inside Lebanon and Syria, not only against leading members of the Hamas and Hezbollah militias but against top Iranian officials. The most provocative was an airstrike on April 1 on the Iranian embassy in Damascus that killed three senior IRGC leaders.
The murder of Iranian officials inside diplomatic grounds that by international convention constitute Iranian territory was an act of war designed to inflame tensions and fuel conflict with Iran. In the event, Iran responded on April 13 by launching a barrage of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles on Israeli airfields, but telegraphed its action days in advance, ensuring that Israel, the US and its allies were able to shoot most down. Little damage was done.
Even as it wreaks death and destruction in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, driving a new wave of Palestinian refugees, the fascistic Zionist regime, backed to the hilt by US imperialism, is more than capable of carrying out further provocations. It is notorious throughout the Middle East for its lawlessness, including sabotage and assassinations inside Iran.
The list of who stands to benefit from political turmoil inside Iran must also include Israel and the United States.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/20/yvpq-m20.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
Palestine, Western Power and the Transition to a Multipolar Global Order
By Amir Nour
“In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.”
(Samuel Phillips Huntington)[1]
Often misattributed to Albert Einstein, the famous adage that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” has rarely been more apt than in the case of the traditionally biased Western governments’ position vis-à-vis the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Remarkably unanimous as far as the substance of the problem is concerned – even though occasionally divergent on paltry details of pure form – these governments, as well as their powerful relays among the globalist elites and mainstream media, have invariably supported and defended loud and clear the theses and objectives of the Israeli occupier, giving themselves a clear conscience by making false promises and failed commitments to the Palestinians, who in the process have steadily been uprooted from their ancestral lands.
Because of their customary hypocritical posturing and morally bankrupt double-standard language and procedures, they have culpably contributed to the perpetuation of both the plight of the Palestinians and a conflict that colonial Great Britain and France in particular and Nazi Germany created during the past century, and which the United States of America constantly feeds in order to serve its strategic interests in a world it has relentlessly strived to dominate and control exclusively since the end of the Second World War.
As a result, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has today become explosive, while its solution, on a just and lasting basis, seems to be moving further and further away, giving rise to an unprecedented degree of despair, mutual hatred and violence in an historically volatile region. The ongoing horrendous Israeli onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip – the fifth of its kind in just 15 years – is further destabilizing the whole region. It is also gravely jeopardizing international peace and security and seriously undermining the credibility and durability of the whole international order put in place in 1945.
In this respect, as early as 2018, I asserted that “Epochal developments in nearly all areas of human activity have triggered increasing concern about the sustainability of an international order conceived, shaped and erected in large measure by the United States of America, in the wake of World War II, thanks to its overwhelming economic and military power. But this so-called US-led ‘liberal’ order has been witnessing steady erosion and is today brutally called into question, to say the least. And surprisingly enough, its very foundations have been subjected to incessant assaults carried out by those who have constructed it (…) As John Ikenberry stated, ‘the world’s most powerful state has begun to sabotage the order it created. A hostile revisionist power has indeed arrived on the scene, but it sits in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the Free world’.[2] The conjunction of such realities as illegal wars waged by self-proclaimed global policemen against weaker ‘disobedient’ albeit sovereign states, and unparalleled economic inequality stemming from the contradictions of capitalist globalization and the behavior of unfettered corporate expansion exploiting almost every area of public and private life, has generated a growing global authoritarianism and social Darwinism (…) Pankaj Mishra[3] aptly captured and eloquently summed up the big picture and the choreography of this danse macabre in which the world got trapped. He rightly observed that ‘future historians may well see such uncoordinated mayhem as commencing the third – and the longest and the strangest – of all world wars, one that approximates, in its ubiquity, a global civil war’”.
Alas, in its annual report 2023/2024 on “The State of the World’s Human Rights”, Amnesty International is painting a similar gloomy picture. Indeed, the UK-based non-governmental organization that campaigns to end abuses of human rights worldwide is sounding alarm on what it says is a watershed moment for international law amid flagrant rule-breaking by governments and corporate actors, which are abandoning the founding values of humanity and universality enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Powerful governments, it explains, cast humanity into an era devoid of effective international rule of law, with civilians in conflicts paying the highest price; rapidly changing artificial intelligence is left to create fertile ground for racism, discrimination and division in landmark year for public elections; and standing against these abuses, people the world over mobilized in unprecedented numbers, demanding human rights protection and respect for our common humanity. All of this “in the midst of deepening global inequality, superpowers vying for supremacy and an escalating climate crisis” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard. But where many governments have failed to abide by international law, she goes on to say, “we have also seen others calling on international institutions to implement the rule of law. And where leaders the world over have failed to stand up for human rights, we have seen people galvanized to march, protest and petition for a more hopeful future (…) People have made it abundantly clear that they want human rights; the onus is on governments to show that they are listening”.
With regard to the genocidal war on Gaza, Callamard stated that “Israel’s flagrant disregard for international law is compounded by the failures of its allies to stop the indescribable civilian bloodshed meted out in Gaza. Many of those allies were the very architects of that post-World War Two system of law (…) In particular, over the last six months, the United States has shielded and protected the Israeli authorities against scrutiny for the multiple violations committed in Gaza (…) By using its veto against a much-needed ceasefire, the United States has emptied out the [United Nations] Security Council of what it should be doing.”
The blind and ironclad US support for Israel once again manifested itself when its Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, was the only representative of a UN Security Council member country to vote against an Algerian-proposed draft resolution[4] recommending to grant the state of Palestine full membership at the United Nations Organization. In a vote of 12 in favor to one against, with two abstentions (UK and Switzerland), the Council thus rejected Palestine’s request, which, had it been adopted, would have recommended the General Assembly to hold a vote with the broader UN membership to allow Palestine to join as a full member state.
In so doing, the US administration has doubled down on its almost visceral hostility to such a membership, which it had already opposed in 2012 when the General Assembly adopted – with a vast majority of 138 votes in favor and only 9 against – resolution 67/19 granting Palestine “non-member state” status, as a state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. Washington’s proclaimed “strong support for a two-state solution” has thus revealed itself to be singularly hollow and contradictory.
Commenting on that issue on X (formerly Twitter), Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council and co-founder and executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said “Take a moment to ponder how isolated Biden has made the US. Biden lobbied Japan, South Korea & Ecuador HARD to oppose the Palestine resolution so that the US wouldn’t have to veto. They refused. So Biden cast his 4th veto in 7 months (!!). This is the opposite of leadership”. By the same token, Washington has failed to use its diplomatic weight to accomplish its face-saving goal before the Security Council, has laid bare the contradictions between its words and deeds, and has shown it cannot formulate a coherent strategy that aligns with its own stated values, thereby further exposing its gradual loss of soft power.[5]
Amnesty International has also finger-pointed several other Western countries for their “grotesque double standards”, including the UK and Germany, continuing to shield and thus bolster the actions of Israel, given those states’ well-founded protests over war crimes by Russia and Hamas. The report specifically condemns the UK for failing to use its leadership role within the UN to prevent human rights violations in Gaza and its weak support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into human rights violations in Israel and Palestine. It also highlights Britain’s unbridled involvement in arming Israel and warns Britain will be “judged harshly by history for its failure to help prevent civilian slaughter in Gaza”.[6]
Yet, and fortunately enough, the lines are starting to move in a changing global geostrategic context, chiefly under the combined effect of the end of the dismal American unipolar dominance parenthesis, the resurgence of Russia and China on the global stage, and the gradual emergence of a Global South, which legitimately claims the right to participate in the management of the affairs of our increasingly interconnected “planetary village”, most conspicuously under the aegis of the BRICS nations.
It is hoped therefore that there will soon be an end to the plunge into the abyss of lawlessness, unaccountability and impunity, lest the disenchanted peoples of the Earth, starting with those of the Arab-Muslim world, irreparably lose faith in the so-called Western liberal values and norms of freedom, equality, human rights, democracy, and rule of law.
The government of South Africa courageously showed the way by dragging Israel through the International Court of Justice, and the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC Karim Khan must quickly follow in its footstep, despite the scandalous letter[7] sent by 12 U.S. senators threatening to take action against him and his staff if the ICC issues international arrest warrants against Israeli officials. In this letter, which blatantly violates international law, the U.S. lawmakers told Khan: “If you issue a warrant for the arrest of the Israeli leadership, we will interpret this not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States (…) Target Israel and we will target you [and] will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States. You have been warned”.
Also worthy of special mention here is the resounding rise of the Vox Populi across the world. It’s increasingly becoming a powerful means in modern political communication, from global popular street protests and demonstrations to smartphones and digital platforms and social media networks, like Facebook a decade ago and TikTok today; the impact of which on political authority, participation and representation is far from negligeable.
The textbook case of genocide that Israel is carrying out against the Palestinian people has inflamed public opinion across the whole world as shown by the millions of pro-Palestinian protesters marching almost daily in rallies on the street of major world cities. These multitudes are united in one overarching demand: ending the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Even in the United States, the staunchest supporter of Israel no matter how gravely damaging this blind support has been to the United States’ national and global interests, growing numbers of protesters are taking to the streets of New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Dallas, among others.
This is particularly true in the case of young people as was powerfully and cogently expressed by actor and environmental activist Harrison Ford: “There’s a new force of nature at hand, stirring all over the world. They are the young people whom frankly we have failed, who are angry, who are organized, who are capable of making a difference. They are a moral army. And the most important thing that we can do for them is to get the hell out of their way.”[8]
One cannot but notice, however, that this advice has yet to be heeded by the powers that be. This is once again illustrated by the violent repression of the ongoing students protests – which are reminiscent of opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street guerilla war of 2011, and the Black Lives Matter international social movement formed in the US in 2013 and dedicated to fighting racism and anti-Black violence – especially in the United States and in a growing number of Western countries, including the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand.
Furthermore, as observed by Chris Hedges[9], not one university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza; not one has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire; not one has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide”, or called for sanctions on and divestment from Israel. Instead, he says, “heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations – including weapons manufacturers – and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children. They have allowed the abusers – the Zionist state and its supporters – to paint themselves as victims.[10] This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue – genocide”.
Thus, for instance, during four hours of grueling testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, the president of Columbia University Minouche Shafik was even grilled about allegations of antisemitism on her campus. In a surreal moment during that congressional hearing, Republican Georgia Congressmember Rick Allen brought up the Bible in his questioning of Shafik. He cited the Old and New Testament and asked Shafik if she wanted Columbia University to be cursed by God![11]
For his part, Gilad Erdan, the Israeli Ambassador to the UN in New York took his point in this regard to ridiculous extreme by declaring publicly that the pro-Palestine and pro-peace protesters in US campuses are ideologically the same as Hamas. At a meeting of the UN General Assembly about Palestinian statehood, he said that the chants of the pro-Palestinian rioters on campuses are calls for Israel’s destruction, adding: “We always knew that Hamas hides in schools. We just didn’t realize that it’s not only schools in Gaza; it’s also Harvard, Columbia and many elite universities”![12]
Also speaking about these protests – which have sprung up at lightning speed on dozens of American campuses covering two-thirds of U.S. states, and are now taking center stage on the international political and media theatre – Shahid King Bolsen argues[13] that the students are protesting against the ongoing genocide, the crime of crimes; a genocide for which the entire collective West is culpable, but of which America is the key enabler, sponsor, defender, protector, funder, armor, and in many ways, the architect. The students, he goes on to say, are being cracked down upon for disavowing and disassociating themselves and their educational institutions from the crimes that their country is perpetuating in Palestine. He pointed out that these protests, which are by no means the first of their kind as they have been ongoing since October 2023, have now reached the ivy league, that is the “crème de la crème” of the institutions of the ruling class, the soil from which the ruling class grow their next generation of leaders. Some cop on the Harvard campus, he adds, “probably just zip tied the future president of the United States, a future Secretary of State, a future diplomat, a future dignitary”. Bolson rightly reminds us that on those same campuses, there have been demonstrations against Russia and in favor of Ukraine as well as protests against China over Xinjiang, and there were no zip ties, no arrests, and no young students going to jail; but the moment they start demanding that their institutions “stop partnering with Israel over a genocide and all hell breaks loose”. He also quite appropriately reminded us that in 2020 this same generation was going around, knocking down statues of slave owners and colonizers. This generation, he remarked, “didn’t have a chance to try to oppose slavery and colonization a century ago or two centuries ago, so they just pulled down all the icons of slavery and colonization. Everything that they could find, they tore it down. But right now, today they have the opportunity to actively oppose and fight against present day colonization in Palestine, and that’s what they’re doing”. These young people, Bolson concludes, “have been primed to take over the system, and instead of taking over the system they’re taking the system down (…) America’s most prestigious campuses have become occupied territories. This is a total system breakdown (…) It’s a tectonic shift. The epicenter is in Gaza but the shock waves are shaking the foundation of American power”.
While it’s true that American opinion continues to vigorously support Israelis rather than Palestinians[14], the current war on Gaza is precipitating the steady decline in Israel’s popularity over the past decade among Democrats and young people, signaling a yawning political and generational divide. It is very likely that President Biden will pay the price of it in November against Donald Trump.
As a consequence of this momentous historical evolution, there are clear signs of a revolt brewing both in the West and among Global South nations and peoples. And after more than three centuries of complete Western domination, a process of de-Westernization of the world coupled with a transition to a multipolar global order seem to be inexorably underway.
To be sure, there is, for once, a silver lining in this new environment for the innocent, dispossessed and oppressed Palestinian people, and for the endlessly and purposefully divided and tormented part of the world they belong to, which the European colonizers once called the “Near East” until the Americans, pursuant to strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s determination, decided it should rather be known as the “Middle East”.[15] Thanks to their steadfast resistance and indescribable sacrifices, Palestinians have at last, and against all odds, succeeded in having their just cause front and center at the global stage. Thus, they have decidedly paved the way for a long-awaited independence and a dignified life on their stolen ancestral land.
Amir Nour is an Algerian researcher in international relations, author of the book L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot (“The Orient and the Occident in time of a New Sykes-Picot”), Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2014: downloadable free of charge, by clicking on the following links:
http://algerienetwork.com/blog/lorient-et-loccident-a-lheure-dun-nouveau-sykes-picot-par-amir-nour/ (French)
http://algerienetwork.com/blog/ￇ￡ￚￇ￡￣-ￇ￡ￚ￭-ￚ￡￬-￣￦ￚￏ-￣ￚ-ￓￇ￭ￓ-￭￦-ￌ/ (Arabic)
Notes
[1] Samuel Phillips Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, Simon & Schuster, 1 January 1998.
[2] G. John Ikenberry, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy: Can the Liberal Order Survive?”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2017.
[3] Pankaj Mishra, “Age of Anger: A History of the Present”, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
[4] See United Nations News, “US vetoes Palestine’s request for full UN membership”, 18 April 2024. The draft resolution is among the shortest in the Council’s history: “The Security Council, having examined the application of the State of Palestine for admission to the United Nations (S/2011/592), recommends to the General Assembly that the State of Palestine be admitted to membership in the United Nations.” Palestine has been a “Permanent Observer” at the UN since 2012, before which it was an observer in the UN General Assembly.
[5] Bradley Blankenship, “The Middle East crisis has made one thing clear about the US”, RT, 22 April 2024.
[6] Karen McVeigh, “UK accused by Amnesty of ‘deliberately destabilizing’ human rights globally”, The Guardian, 24 April 2024.
[7] To read the letter: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000018f-4e0e-d759-a9ff-ff4ee9420000
[8] Harrison Ford, statement on the importance of rainforests during the UN Climate Action Summit 2019, 23 September 2019.
[9] Chris Hedges, “Revolt in the Universities”, ScheerPost, 25 April 2024.
[10] Read in this respect: Robert Tait, “Sanders hits back at Netanyahu: ‘It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable’”, The Guardian, 27 April 2024. In a two-and-a-half-minute video, Sanders – who sponsored an unsuccessful Senate bill in January to make US aid to Israel conditional on its observance of human rights and international law – listed a catalogue of Israeli crimes in Gaza, including the destruction of infrastructure, hospitals, universities and schools, along with the killing of more than 400 health workers.
[11] Excerpt from the dialogue: “Rep. Rick Allen: Are you familiar with Genesis 12:3? Minouche Shafik: “Probably not as well as you are, Congressman”. Allen: “Well, it’s pretty clear. It was the covenant that God made with Abraham. And that covenant was real clear: ‘If you bless Israel, I will bless you. If you curse Israel, I will curse you.’ And then, in the New Testament, it was confirmed that all nations would be blessed through you (…) Do you consider that a serious issue? I mean, do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God, of the Bible?” Definitely not, answered Shafik. The Congressman then concluded by saying: “OK. Well, that’s good”.
[12] Voice of America News, “More US campus unrest erupts over war in Gaza”, 1 May 2024.
[13] Shahid King Bolsen, “University Protests for Palestine | Campus Protests Signaling Significant Change in America”, Middle Nation, 27 April 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zAvTEBLme8
[14] Jeffrey M. Jones, “Americans’ Views of Both Israel, Palestinian Authority Down”, 4 March 2024. According to Gallup figures, young adults show the biggest decline in ratings of Israel, dropping from 64% favorable among 18- to 34-year-olds in 2023 to 38%. Middle-aged adults (those aged 35 to 54) show a smaller but still significant drop, from 66% to 55%, while there has been no meaningful change among adults aged 55 and older.
[15] Read the brilliant analysis of Chas W. Freeman Jr., “The Middle East is Once Again West Asia”, Remarks to the Middle East Forum at Falmouth, 6 August 2023.
Kyrgyzstan's angry young lash out at foreign students
President Sadyr Japarov and his closest ally, security services boss Kamchybek Tashiyev, are adept at neutralizing political threats. But when it comes to sudden mass violence, they're at a loss.
Peter Leonard
A pogrom directed at Pakistani nationals in Kyrgyzstan’s capital late Friday night has elicited a telling spectrum of responses from the country’s leadership.
Mortified apologies from some. Stony silence, and even justification, from others.
The former camp is evincing signs of anxiety at the reputational risk posed by perceptions of Kyrgyzstan as a lawless hotbed of xenophobic sentiment.
But the populists that wield ultimate control — and this includes the likes of President Sadyr Japarov, who came to power in October 2020 on the back of similar street unrest — look unprepared to confront their base.
But how exactly did the trouble begin?
According to the Interior Ministry, the trigger incident occurred in the early hours of May 13.
Two groups of people described by police as “unknown persons of Asian appearance” (young Kyrgyz men, in other words) and “foreign students” got into a brawl outside a restaurant in Bishkek’s Vostok-5 microdistrict. The students fled the scene and holed up at their place of residence.
The group of Kyrgyz men gave chase and barged into the hostel, smashing furniture and stealing money and possessions along the way. It was when they entered the sleeping quarters of the female residents that the foreign students fought back. The beating was apparently bad enough that an ambulance was called.
Four days later, surveillance footage showing the foreign students raining blows on the Kyrgyz men in the yard of their hostel surfaced on social media.
It is not known who shared the footage.
After dark fell on Friday, a crowd of around 200 people formed around the hostel where the confrontation occurred. The mob demanded that the foreign students be adequately punished. Assurances from the police that a handful of men had been arrested and were being deported did nothing to calm tempers. Some people trying to get inside the building were detained by the police.
Organisers among the rioters reportedly broadcast live online streams throughout the night, encouraging others to join in. More young men accordingly began to come out onto the streets and fanned out in clusters across the city. An alert was put out for all available police officers to turn up for duty, but it was too late.
At around 1 a.m., the dormitory of the International University of Kyrgyzstan came under attack. A mob pelted the building with rocks, assaulted students and looted belongings. This appears to have lasted for about an hour.
Throughout the night, groups of young men roamed Bishkek downtown, apparently looking for new targets. The ranks of the police expanded too, but they were notably conciliatory, pleading with the mob to return home instead of confronting it.
MUK rector Asylbek Aidaraliyev on Monday speculated that the assault on his university’s dormitory was pre-planned.
“At 1 a.m., people were coming to the dorm in cars, people were giving them lifts. Some are saying that vodka was being passed around,” he said. “The amazing thing is that the police just stood there, they didn’t do a thing.”
Among the first official reactions the following morning arrived from the powerful head of the security services, Kamchybek Tashiyev, who mingled his condemnation of unspecified “provocateurs” with a dose of sympathy for the anger of the mobs.
“This [incident] was connected to the influx of labor migrants,” he said.
This was an allusion to the fact that many students from south Asia — specifically Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals pursuing medical degrees — work on the side as couriers for food delivery services.
This unlawful expat worker scare had been hanging in the air even before the pogrom. Two days before those events, the Interior Ministry announced that 400 foreign students were fired from their jobs as food deliverymen following a police crackdown.
While Tashiyev has equivocated, President Japarov has remained signally quiet on this whole episode.
It has fallen instead to members of the Cabinet to express dismay and handle the diplomatic fallout.
Deputy Prime Minister Edil Baisalov visited the dormitory of medical students at the International University of Kyrgyzstan to extend an apology on behalf of all Kyrgyz people.
“Since time immemorial, our people have respected guests from afar. We call them ‘musapyr.’ I know the same word exists in Urdu, and this shows how close our people are,” Baisalov said. “Your parents and relatives should know that you are not in danger in Kyrgyzstan, and that the authorities bear full responsibility for your well-being.”
Labor Minister Gulnara Baatirova stuck her neck out even further by suggesting her fellow Kyrgyz citizens were shy of doing hard work — and thereby leaving that space open to foreigners.
“The shortage of labourers is most felt in sewing workshops and in construction. And our citizens often do not work reliably. So after working in sewing factories and getting trained up, they leave and set up their own workshop,” she told state news agency Kabar. “Many do not come to work on time, they disappear for two-three days after receiving their salary, and ask for time off for celebrations and birthdays.”
This is not the first time that Japarov and Tashiyev, the tandem running Kyrgyzstan, have looked at a loss to know how to react to random episodes of turmoil.
As seasoned rabble-rousers from their many years of doing grassroots opposition politics, they are well aware of the danger posed by the unpredictable mob.
Their strategy for holding onto power since they seized it almost four years ago has been to jail anybody even thinking of holding a demo that might escalate into a major protest. In the most notable enactment of this philosophy to date, dozens of activists and politicians were arrested in October 2022 on the spurious grounds that they were planning to use rallies against a contentious border deal with Uzbekistan as cover for toppling the government.
Prison sentences are dished out with similarly flimsily justification on a routine basis. Earlier this month, a court sentenced writer and political activist Olzhobai Shakir to five years in prison for purportedly inciting civic disobedience and public unrest.
It is organic popular rage that Japarov and Tashiyev are unable to forecast or cope with.
Last August, a top-level match of kok-boru, a form of polo played with a headless goat, caused a riot in the southern city of Osh amid claims of unfair refereeing from supporters of the losing side. Japarov, who was in attendance, had to be whisked away for safety.
To make matters worse for the president, the match, which pitted a team from the north against one from the south, had been framed as a representation of national unity.
That ugly incident in Osh exposed the hollowness of official unity rhetoric and the superficiality of the Japarov-Tashiyev tandem’s pretense of having an iron-clad grip over the whole country. The anti-Pakistani pogroms, meanwhile, have laid bare an unfocused, simmering anger, most pronounced among Kyrgyzstan’s underemployed male youths, that looks liable to spill over at any time.
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